Working-Class Woman

Charley Toorop painted this in 1942 and 1943, in the middle of the German occupation. She had refused to join the Kultuurkamer, the chamber the occupiers set up to control Dutch cultural life, and as a result she was officially barred from exhibiting or selling her work. For a long time the Stedelijk knew almost nothing about the sitter, only that Toorop had described her as a working woman and, in her letters, called her Mother Punt. In 2019 relatives got in touch with the museum after a newspaper had named the wrong woman. They had recognised their grandmother, Johanna Punt, known as Jansje, from the village of Bergen, who kept house for Charley Toorop. By then the painting was already one of the best-loved in the museum's permanent display.